Slaapkamer met twee vrouwen en een man c. 1880 - 1910

This stereoscopic card, entitled "Pickwick in the Wrong Room," was produced by an anonymous maker sometime in the late nineteenth century. The scene stages a literary reference to Charles Dickens's *The Pickwick Papers*, which chronicles the misadventures of Samuel Pickwick and his friends. Here, we see a man intruding on a bedroom occupied by two women, one who sits on the bed and one who lays beneath the covers. Such cards were popular forms of entertainment in a growing consumer culture, and as such, they reflected and reinforced prevailing social norms. The humor here plays on the impropriety of the situation, reflecting anxieties around social transgressions and gender roles during the Victorian era. The institutional history of photography is relevant here, as is the growth of literacy and a popular readership who would understand the literary reference. Historians consult printed sources, visual culture, and popular culture, but also legal documents that tell us about contemporary attitudes towards sex, marriage, and privacy. These are just some of the resources we use to understand the art and visual culture of the past.